


the sun and skies themselves

by inmylife



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Season: Marielda, edmund actually talks to ethan about high sun day au, ethan is very stressed and refuses to admit it to himself for 4k words: the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29164689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmylife/pseuds/inmylife
Summary: "you know none of this works if we hide things from each other."edmund waits a little longer. ethan can't do this alone.
Relationships: Edmund Hitchcock & Ethan Hitchcock
Kudos: 5





	the sun and skies themselves

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't for secsam or anything i just had the misfortune to finish this on january 31 and i crave validation and didn't wanna wait to post

What happens is this: Edmund comes home from Memoriam, and he doesn’t come out of his room. 

At first it’s a day. Ethan assumes he was injured – fine, sure, Edmund had covered Ethan’s own classes while Ethan was recovering from his neck wound from Train Day – and that he’ll come out eventually. Ethan doesn’t go in because they spend so much time being one person, they have to have _some_ privacy, so their bedrooms are boundaries the other usually doesn’t cross. 

But then it’s a week. Then it’s two weeks, and Edmund hasn’t even come out to eat with the others, he hasn’t even come out to see Ethan. Castille stays over one night and says she hears the upstairs floorboards creaking so he _must_ be using the bathroom at least, and Ms. Salary who’s apparently with them now promises Ethan she’s been in to tend to his brother’s wounds, but Edmund still hasn’t come out of his room, not really, not in any meaningful way. He still hasn’t come to see Ethan.

Then it’s a month, and Ethan can’t keep doing this any longer. Not seeing Edmund makes him feel like a part of himself has been cut away, and _being_ Edmund just makes Ethan feel like he doesn’t want to keep being just one person. E. Hitchcock was Ethan’s idea in the first place, but the longer he has to do it alone the more he regrets it. 

And so he starts betting. With Sige, with Aubrey, with Castille. With Peg and Zaktrak and Ms. Salary, even with Caroline Fair-Play (who’s calling him Ethan now, who was with Edmund at Memoriam, who still has something she’s not telling him even though he can’t figure out what it is), that today will be the day. Edmund will come out today, he knows it. 

Ethan loses a lot of money. He stops caring about how much money he’s losing and keeps betting anyway because if he thinks about this in any other terms he thinks he may fall apart. 

Then it’s two months, and Ethan can’t do this alone anymore. He just can’t.

Edmund should get out of bed. Edmund should get out of bed, but he can’t. Edmund should leave his room at hours that aren’t only in the dead of night to sneak food and wash up, but he can’t and he won’t. Because if he leaves he’ll see Ethan, and if he sees Ethan he’ll have to tell him about the Heat and the Dark, and Edmund doesn’t want to relive that. He can’t. He does it too much already. Every time he blinks he sees it behind his eyes. 

It’s like this every night, now. He can’t sleep, and when he manages it, it’s never restful. He can never muster the energy to get out of bed for long, because it feels pointless when the Heat and the Dark are coming and there’s nothing anyone can do and there are still soft sore spots on his body from where Silas had kicked him and he feels that pain every time he moves. So mostly he just stares at the wall, and he berates himself, and he remembers.

The door opens. Edmund startles. 

"It’s me." It’s Ethan. 

Edmund stays silent. 

Ethan closes the door behind him and approaches his bed. Edmund winces at each footstep. Everything is too loud, now. Everything’s been too loud, since Memoriam. 

He sits on the edge of Edmund’s bed and says, "Please. Talk to me." 

Edmund can’t. 

"Edmund," he continues. "Come on. You have to talk to me. You have to come out. I can’t – I can’t keep up the school all on my own." It sounds like he’s trying to hold back a laugh. Edmund doesn’t get it. He knows that Ethan doesn’t know, but he just doesn’t see how anyone can laugh now. The world is doomed and he doesn’t know what he can do to stop it, and everything still hurts, even in the places where the bruises have healed. 

He can’t. He just can’t. In this moment, confronted with Ethan after weeks of avoiding almost any living soul, Edmund feels more helpless than he’s been since the night at Memoriam when Silas – when Sabinia – no. He’s not going to think about that, he can’t -

But he does think about it. He can’t stop himself. 

"Please," Ethan says again, sounding more desperate than he had when their father had left them. Than Edmund’s ever heard him, maybe. "I’m worried. I’m worried about you." 

And when faced with that, what choice does Edmund have?

He tells Ethan everything. Ethan moves from sitting on the bed to lying down next to him, and he stays silent while Edmund talks. He doesn’t even laugh when Edmund explains that the Fair-Play sisters had been running the same scam on the two of them that they’ve been running on everyone else. 

Then Edmund tells him that Marielda is dying. Edmund tells him that the Heat and the Dark are coming. Edmund tells him what he saw in the rectory, and Edmund begins to cry, and Ethan, bewildered, reaches his arms out and pulls Edmund into a hug, which is not something they’ve done since they were very small. Edmund clutches at the back of his brother’s shirt and tells him, through his sobs, “I don’t know what to do, Ethan. I don’t know what we can do.” 

"Surely," Ethan whispers, "we can do _something._ "

The day they’re to meet with the Tea Leaf Set, Ethan convinces Snitch that there’s another important errand E. Hitchcock needs to run, and wouldn’t it be so kind of Snitch to go meet with this noble what’s-his-name in his place, he would pay and it might be a good networking opportunity for the Nightly News. Snitch, bless him, goes without too much argument. 

Ethan is worried about Edmund, and he doesn’t know what much to do about it besides throwing the both of them into the search for the map with a renewed vigor. It seems to keep Edmund’s mind off Memoriam for the most part. Ethan still catches him staring into the distance, and he still comes into Edmund’s room at night and catches him not sleeping, but it’s something. It’s an improvement from Edmund sobbing into him two months after Memoriam, two months where he hadn’t left his room. 

He also still doesn’t know what to think about the Heat and the Dark. He tries not to think about it at all. It may be coming, but Ethan can’t see it, and that means Ethan doesn’t have to think about it. Right?

And besides, maybe if they find the map it won’t even be their problem anymore. Maybe the Heat and the Dark is just coming for Marielda. Maybe if they can find the mansion, if they go to it, they can be safe.

It was a funny choice they made, going together. Going as two Hitchcocks instead of one. But last night they’d fallen asleep without consulting as to what clothes they’d wear the next day, and they’d come out of their rooms in the morning wearing two different shirts, and their eyes had met and Ethan had known it was right that they do this as the two of them.

Also, he doubts Snitch would have made a good impression on Coral. As she leads them through to the backyard, Ethan can’t stop his eyes from wandering over the finely embroidered pillows and the clever little teacups sitting in every crevice, and he knows Snitch would have been loud about how fancy this place is.

They sit at a little table and chairs in Coral’s backyard. Ethan doesn’t listen much as Edmund answers Coral’s questions about the map, but he does tune back in when Edmund takes out the map and Coral reaches for a knife.

"No," he says sharply.

"I just need a corner," Coral says, voice careful, like Ethan’s a wild animal she’s trying not to scare off. "Not enough to take anything important."

"It’s fine, Ethan," Edmund tells him. "Maybe… Coral, if you could take the corner without the nice border?"

"Yes. Sure. Fine."

It really is only a bit of the map. Not enough to really make any substantial tea, Ethan thinks, almost nonsensically, as Coral grinds up the paper and starts a kettle.

"Which one of you is going to drink it, then," she asks when she’s done.

Ethan opens his mouth at the same time Edmund does, but Edmund’s voice gets there first. That’s alright. He slumps a little further into the cold metal chair and looks everywhere but at Edmund as his brother goes under.

"So how long have you –"

"Shh," Coral admonishes. "He might say something and neither of us want to miss it."

Right. Ethan nods, more to himself than to her, and waits.

It is silent for a long while – or as near silent as Marielda gets. He can still hear the noise of people from the streets beyond, a door slamming in a house next door, the wind through the grass.

Then Edmund shifts in his sleep. "Silas," he mutters.

Ethan freezes. He knows that name.

The man who’d tricked his brother, the man who’d beaten him and left him soft and scared on the cold stone floor of the Memoriam operating theatre. Of course this is the bastard who has the other half of their map. Of course it is the one private collector into whose home Ethan doubts Edmund will ever venture, even for something as important as this. Ethan fills with rage. He stands from the table and smacks the chair onto the ground, then stalks over to a pile of rocks in Coral’s backyard to kick them over. Coral starts to admonish him, but cuts herself off with a sigh. 

Ethan has his temper tantrum, and when he’s through his foot hurts from kicking the rocks too hard and his shoulders are so tense he’s sure they’ll still hurt the next morning, but emotionally he’s calmer. Edmund’s awake when he’s done, eyebrows furrowed, but present.

"Ethan?" he asks, as Ethan walks back over.

"You were saying Silas," Ethan tells him. "Silas has the map."

"Oh," Edmund says, leaning back in the chair. "Well."

_"You’re coming to kill me."_

This time, it’s him who goes into Ethan’s room. Once again, everything inside Edmund is reeling. 

Somehow, he is dreading this conversation even more than he had dreaded telling Ethan about the Heat and the Dark. Ethan was the one to decide they should join the cavalry. Samothes’ cavalry. Edmund wants to turn tail and run away out of some (irrational) fear that this might be what makes Ethan turn away from him. 

And yet. 

Wasn’t Ethan the one who had said that there must be something they could do? 

_"As time goes on… I wonder if they might be right."_

He will understand. Edmund has to believe he will understand, in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

Edmund shakes Ethan awake. 

"It’s Samothes," he whispers, once Ethan’s wide eyes stare up back at him. "To save Marielda… we have to kill Samothes." 

Ethan, Edmund notices, has thrown himself into planning for the High Sun Day heist the same way he had thrown himself into looking for the map.

Ethan, Edmund notices, never mentions the Heat and the Dark. Ethan says that killing Samothes will "fix things", that "everything will be better" after that.

Edmund is not sure that he believes Ethan. Edmund is not sure that Ethan believes himself, either.

Even as they get off the train, Ethan still can't believe this is happening.

They're at Samothes' palace. They are here to _kill Samothes_. Edmund thinks that, because Samothes himself told him in a dream that he knows they're coming, that there is nothing they can do about it. That Samothes is going to die, because time is weird for gods, and he just knows, somehow. Sige thinks that their plan is bad, and that he's going to have to stop them somehow. Ethan had seen the look on Sige's face when Castille had told them that that weird knife was the way to go; Edmund hadn't been paying attention, but Ethan had seen it.

Ethan thinks that the Heat and the Dark need to be stopped no matter the cost, because it has cost his brother too much already. But he doesn't like what he'd seen in Maelgwyn when he'd killed most of the Golden Lance with that knife. And... it's Samothes. Ethan hadn't joined himself and Edmund up with the cavalry out of any sort of belief or devotion, but Samothes is their god. Their commander. They might not be cavalrymen anymore, but it still feels wrong.

He puts one foot in front of the other, and lets Primo show him into a room, alone, and he prays. For the first time in a long time, Ethan prays to Samothes, truly and trusting and desperate.

Edmund opens Ethan's door, and the moment it swings open, he's shocked at what he sees in front of him. Ethan, standing directly in front of the door, trying to pick the lock from the inside – that's not what surprises him. No, he's surprised because he and Ethan are dressed as close to the same as they have in days.

When Primo had asked him what he wanted to wear, Edmund had thought for a while before tentatively asking to wear something traditional, from Nacre. The sort of thing he had vague, hazy memories of his father wearing, back when their family was him and Ethan and their father and their mother, all together.

Ethan, evidently, had asked for the same thing. The clothes are different colors, but the style is the same.

They take a moment to take each other in, before Edmund is distracted by the others behind them, and looks away.

He sticks by Edmund until he sees Aubrey slipping away. "I'll be right back," he tells his brother, and leaves without looking to see if Edmund had heard him.

"Aubrey," he says, catching her attention just as the elevator doors open.

"Oh. Ethan." Aubrey looks nervous, and a little confused, and she has a familiar faraway look on her face. "Are you coming with me?"

"Someone should," he shrugs as he follows her in.

The doors open onto a bedroom not unlike the one Ethan had been in earlier, except this one is bigger... and has the symbol of Samot on some of the furniture.

Right. Castille had said something about Samot and Samothes and Maelgwyn having been a family. Edmund had said something about seeing Maelgwyn as a child in his dreams. Edmund had also said something about their mother, something that Ethan pushes to the back of his mind as he sees Aubrey making a beeline to Maelgwyn's mask and crown, which are sitting on the bed.

She reaches for the crown. "Wait," Ethan says, striding to the bed as quick as he can and taking the mask before Aubrey can do anything.

She puts on the crown a moment after he puts on the mask, though.

 _Hello_ , he hears. Ethan sees Aubrey's eyes widen – she's hearing it too.

"Samot," Aubrey mouths. Ethan nods in understanding and holds a finger to his lips. He's doing the talking.

"Hello," he says, tentatively.

 _Who is –_ there's some kind of commotion on Samot's end. _Where's Maelgwyn?_

"Downstairs, last I saw him," Ethan answers.

_So you're h- you're at the party?_

"Are _you_?" Ethan asks curiously. He had assumed Samot would be at the front lines, but it had almost sounded like the voice on the other end had started to say, _so you're here?_.

_...In spirit._

Lie.

This isn't Samot, Ethan realizes, and his stomach sinks, just as the elevator doors open and two mages stride into the room.

"Hey," Edmund realizes, turning to Sige. "I haven't seen my brother in a while."

"I haven't seen Aubrey in a while," Sige affirms, eyebrows furrowing as he looks around the room for them. They're not here, of course – Edmund and Sige are in Samothes' suite, with the two remaining Lance Nobles and Brother Silas. Ethan and Aubrey would have come in with them.

"Want me to find them?" Edmund offers. Anything to get out of the same room as Silas. Something inside him still roils with embarrassment and shame and fear at the knowledge that that priest is here.

Sige waves a dismissive hand at him. "Primo and I got on okay. I'm sure he'll know where they are; I'll go ask."

Sige and Primo leave the room together. Edmund is left alone with the woman whose hand he cut off, another Lance Noble, and Brother Silas.

He wishes Ethan were here. He wants Ethan here.

They knocked him out.

Aubrey is still asleep when Ethan comes to. The room is empty.

The mages had left them just a little too close to the buffet table.

Ethan grabs a knife and cuts his hands free, then his feet, then Aubrey. She blinks awake at him just as he's sliced through her last bond. "Let's get out of here," he says.

"Our things," Aubrey hesitates. "He... he said there'd be a key..."

She stands, grimacing a little, and walks over to a desk with a singleminded focus. She pulls open a drawer and there is a key. Then, Aubrey turns to a large chest sitting in the corner of the room.

The key fits. "How-?" asks Ethan.

Aubrey shrugs. "I had a dream."

Ethan doesn't question it. Seems like everyone but him has been having weird dreams lately. He just walks over to the door, and opens it only to come face to face with Sige.

"Oh," says Sige. "I was – I was here to get you out, but it looks like you beat me to it."

Ethan smiles wryly at him. Aubrey walks past both of them out into the hallway. "Let's just get out of here," she says.

Ethan hesitates.

It doesn't feel right. To kill Samothes… the Heat and the Dark must be stopped, it's true, but can he stand by and watch a god be killed, even if it means saving the city - saving _everyone_?

Ethan stands with Sige, sword in hand, pointed towards Maelgwyn – Ethan can only look at Maelgwyn, because if he looks anywhere else he'll see Aubrey, Aubrey with Sige's gun in her hand, in tears, the gun pointed at the two of them.

Then, though, Maelgwyn takes another step forward, and Ethan sees Edmund.

He can only watch as his brother – his little brother, scared and soft and desperate and _brave_ – gets himself captured with a knife at his throat. He can only watch as Edmund tries and fails to get free, can only watch as the mage, startled, drops him on the floor as he bleeds – can only watch as Aubrey drops the gun and runs from Sige to Edmund, hands fluttering frantically over the gushing wound in his throat. She looks up at Ethan, and he can see the terror in her eyes even through the tears and across the room.

Ethan leaves Sige to face Maelgwyn alone and rushes to Edmund's side, collapsing to his knees next to Aubrey, whose hands tremble over Edmund’s throat. "I don’t know what to do," she whispers. 

"I never learned field medicine," Ethan tells her helplessly, and they stare at each other, wide-eyed, for a moment, until Aubrey reaches into her pack with a cautious resolve and takes out some bandages and a little unlabeled bottle.

He cradles his brother in his arms the same way he had that night months ago when Edmund had first told him the truth about the Heat and the Dark. Ethan holds onto him as though he could keep his brother from falling to pieces, even as Edmund's eyes become less and less focused. He holds Edmund as though he could hold him together. As though he could keep him whole.

Behind them, Maelgwyn takes his sword and drives it into his father's back.

Ethan does not watch his god die.

It's not that they have the map now, and therefore they must go. 

It's that Marielda is forever changed. This city. Their city. They no longer recognize it. And therefore they cannot stay.

They spend one last night in the apartment below the dueling school. Ethan sits at the foot of Edmund’s bed - he almost has to laugh, that nearly dying was what it finally took to get his brother to sleep through the night - and stares out the window. 

"You're leaving in the morning."

Aubrey pushes open the door softly. Her tail slides across the floor as she comes over to sit next to him.

"Yeah,” Ethan tells her. “We are."

"I’m leaving too," Aubrey says. "Samot has - he's offered me a position. His very own Primo," she adds, smiling wryly. 

"You’ll do great."

“Yeah,” she murmurs, kicking her feet. 

Behind them, Edmund shifts in his sleep. They both turn. 

"How is he?" Aubrey looks up at Ethan, face drawn. The moonlight coming through the window lights her up, making her look paler than she probably is. 

Ethan sighs. "At least he’s sleeping. I've - I've been worried. For a long time." His eyes linger on his brother – linger over the wound on his neck, and linger over the places where Edmund had been bruised and bleeding when he'd come home from the Valentine Affair over a year ago now. "Since Memoriam."

"He was hurt bad," Aubrey acknowledges. "But so were you." She looks meaningfully at where Ethan's arm is bandaged, where he'd been burned by Castille's ghost; she looks at the cuts and bruises from where he’d been hit by debris as Marielda had built itself anew. "I’m worried about you, too, Ethan." Her eyes fill with tears. "Are you gonna be okay?"

He shrugs. "I’ll be fine. Edmund –"

"No," corrects Aubrey. "You. It’s not…" 

She breaks eye contact, looking down at the floor. Ethan recognizes the way her voice trails off. It’s that haunted way she gets in, when she thinks too hard about Memoriam.

"It’s never an easy thing to learn that the world is ending and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it," she says finally. "And I think everyone was so relieved that he was finally out of bed that no one ever really checked up on you to see how you were handling it. We should have." Aubrey takes a deep breath. "I should have." 

"Aubrey-" 

"I’m gonna miss you." 

Her voice trembles. Ethan wishes it didn’t have to be this way. 

"I’m gonna miss you, too."

Edmund doesn’t remember the journey to the house. 

He spends most of it half-awake, leaning against Ethan behind him on the horse. He knows it takes days. He knows they very nearly run out of food. He knows it gets colder, the farther from Marielda they travel.

He knows when they reach it, too, but mostly Edmund knows that because he hears Ethan gasp. "Edmund," his brother whispers. "Is this – is this what you saw in your dreams?"

The mansion looks just the same as every other time he's seen it. "Of course it is," he tells Ethan.

His brother has to help him off the horse. Edmund had lost a lot of blood, and Aubrey's tools had had some leftover dream dust on them, and he knows he hasn't been quite all there. He knows that that scares Ethan. He knows that Ethan is scared. He knows that Ethan has been scared since that night Edmund had come home from Memoriam and went into his room and didn't come out.

He hopes Ethan will stop being scared now that they are here.

Edmund thinks that, all this time, Ethan has thought that everything will be okay if they can just figure out the map. He knows Ethan hasn't admitted this to anyone – he doesn't think Ethan's even admitted it to himself. But Edmund knows. Now that they live separate lives again, sometimes he knows Ethan better than Ethan knows himself.

Ethan keeps one hand on Edmund's back as they walk through the grass and approach the door.

Their mother walked these halls, once. Their mother played in these fields. Their mother’s bare feet touched this land and now, decades later, her sons’ boots touch it too. 

The door opens before Ethan even has the chance to knock. Edmund knows the man who opens it is Samol, somehow, despite never having seen him before.

The god standing in the doorway smiles at them. "Come on in, boys."

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr at [deep-hearts-core](https://deep-hearts-core.tumblr.com/) and twitter at [isunshower](https://twitter.com/isunshower), come say hi!


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